Appropedia talk:AT CAD Team/Organic buildings

Bamboo must be a much better way, very fast growing. Plenty of different species to choose from with an estimated maximum height for each type, the structure of each stem is uniformly circular and rigid in itself, but if you plant and bundle together 3 or 7 bamboo stems very closely they will be made to grow extremely sturdy. Traditionally used in China as scaffolding on construction sites and by painters. (small side-effects of growing bamboo is it can attract many insects, can rot from overwatering, but that can be treated with Borax and/or boric acid, perhaps automatic drip irrigation?)

Trees are to slow growers and willow/salix as in the German example, will only live 30-35 years. Bamboo have no branches that stick out, perfect for mounting the Humdinger Windbelt vertically on all external corners?

Like the methods used at the university in Frankfurt it could also be possible to cut of fullgrown bamboo stems one at a time, treat it with some weather proofing (spraying or dripping internally?) and then place a small plint of concrete under them, when it is dried out. (perhaps more techniques can be applied to improve the growth for sturdyness sustainability? Perhaps protecting them against insects during the growth with plastic sheets?) --Yeahvle 11:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about bamboo; keep in mind that the idea is that the trees are to remain alive (so we're not just using wood here to build something). I heard about treating bamboo wood with chemicals (application on the inside), but since the tree needs to remain alive, I'm not sure whether it's possible. Also, I don't know how old bamboo can become (I guess this depends on the species used). Finally, the fact that the tree is hard to espalier, and grows straight up is actually not always a good thing (depends on structure to make). Perhaps that some bamboo species can be used however, but we need to look into it; also keep in mind that local trees need to be used, so salix can be used in Europe, but not in Asia and vice versa.